How courts review the decisions of government, agencies and tribunals — fairness, and the limits of public power.
An administrative decision affecting a person's rights or interests must be made fairly; how much process is owed varies with the circumstances.
A court reviewing an administrative decision presumptively applies a reasonableness standard, reserving correctness for defined categories.
The Court reset the framework for the standard of review, establishing a presumption that administrative decisions are reviewed for reasonableness, with correctness reserved for defined categories such as constitutional questions and general questions of law of central importance. It also gave detailed guidance on what makes a decision reasonable.
The Court restructured judicial review, reducing the standards of review to two — correctness and reasonableness — and setting out when each applies. Its framework was later revised in Vavilov.
The Court set out the factors that shape the content of the duty of procedural fairness, held that fairness could require written reasons, and confirmed that discretionary decisions must be exercised reasonably and consistently with the values underlying the power granted.
Reviewing a labour board's reading of its own statute, the Court held that courts should defer to a tribunal's reasonable interpretation within its expertise, intervening only where the decision was patently unreasonable. An early foundation of deference in Canadian administrative law.
A probationary police officer dismissed without reasons was owed a duty of fairness, even though he could not claim the full protections of natural justice. The Court recognised a general duty of fairness in administrative decision-making, bridging the old divide between “judicial” and “administrative” functions.